The East Ridge City Council on Thursday aborted all efforts to appoint a popular third-place candidate to a vacant council seat and selected someone they’ve never before mentioned in a public setting.
Public questionsCouncilmen again tabled a controversial resolution that would require residents at a public meeting to submit most financial questions in writing and would give the city manager two weeks to provide a response.
Darwin Branam, who served as councilman from 1988 to 1990, got the unanimous nod from a council that bitterly argued over the seat a day after the Chattanooga Times Free Press disclosed its private e-mails and conversations regarding who would fill it.
“Am I the best qualified?” said Branam, who did not run for the two open council seats in November. “I don’t know that.”
He will be sworn in at a future meeting. He will hold the seat until the 2012 election and can run for the seat then.
Before Branam’s appointment, Marc Gravitt, who last November received 1,490 votes in his third-place council bid, withdrew his name from consideration when it appeared that Mayor Brent Lambert and Vice Mayor Larry Sewell would not support him. Gravitt’s brief exit speech came after five residents unsuccessfully lobbied Lambert and Sewell on his behalf.
For the second week in a row, no one in the standing-room-only City Hall crowd approached the podium to endorse anyone else.
While some residents applauded councilmen who stressed “unity” in selecting Branam, dozens more left in protest. Before the vote, several people reacted to reports that Lambert, Sewell and Manning privately communicated their thoughts about the open seat.
“Is this an agenda?” East Ridge resident Mark Brandt asked the council. “Are you trying to stack the board with people you favor?”
Lambert did not address the questions, instead imploring a soft-spoken Brandt to be “civil.”
“I don’t like what I’ve been seeing in the press,” Ken Meyer said. “It’s an embarrassment. It’s showing the rest of the world that East Ridge doesn’t have its act together.”
After the public comment period ended, Lambert began speaking about how city employees did “a fantastic job” with keeping snowy roads clear.
Several residents murmured, and one woman said, “He’s completely ignoring us.”
Later, Councilman Jim Bethune, a Gravitt supporter, directed strong comments toward the vice mayor.
“It didn’t matter who got the votes [in November’s election],” Bethune said. “He was voting for whomever the mayor wanted.”
Sewell did not address the comments, but Lambert, who stressed “transparency” through the entire process, had something to say to his critics.
“There’s a lot I would like to say,” Lambert said. “But I won’t.”